Growing up in Aberdeen. Children of
the Nineteen Fifties. A special study.
Aberdeen has seen dramatic changes since the 1950s. The “Granite City” had developed around
industries such as paper making, fishing, quarrying and agricultural
machinery. Then with the discovery of
oil in the 1970s it was transformed into the oil capital of Europe as new
wealth and new people arrived. Social
mobility was accelerated by the influx of new wealth. A provincial city saw the arrival of new people
from around the world. How have these changes affected the lives of
Aberdonians?
We are fortunate to have a unique data set on which to draw
to answer questions such as these. We
have been able to follow a complete cohort of people born between 1950 and 1956
through their lives. 12,500 children in primary schools in Aberdeen were given
health, psychological and educational tests between 1962 and 1964. This survey was set up by one of the first
Heads of Sociology at Aberdeen – Raymond Illsley. It was complemented by a survey of teachers
and families. Later on these data were
linked up with administrative health records and there was one follow up survey
in 2001. Fortunately, most people
remained in the Aberdeenshire region so that their records are complete. This has proved an invaluable resource for
understanding influences on medical conditions through life. Further information can be found on https://www.abdn.ac.uk/birth-cohorts/1950s/.
The Aberdeen Children of the Nineteen Fifties is a large birth cohort study which at the time of the last data sweep in 2001 still had 7183of the original sample in it. They are enthusiastic participants in our study and one of the sits on the Advisory Board of the study (as do I). There is a lively Facebook page and at a reunion meeting in the Elphinstone Hall in February 2016, numbers had to be restricted because so many wanted to come along.
It has not been used very much by sociologists to date - but
we are hoping to change that.
A new/old study about
oil in Aberdeen is sent to us. But what was it?
An additional data source appeared unexpectedly two years
ago when Isabel Seidel, the Sociology Departmental secretary, was contacted by
David Oldman, a former sociologist in the Department. He is now living in London and whilst moving
house found a box of papers in his garage.
It was the data from an ESRC study which used the Aberdeen Children of
the Nineteen Fifties in the 1980s to contact families involved in the oil
industry as part of the nationwide Social Change and Economic Life initiative
led by Duncan Gallie. The Aberdeen part
of it was christened with the unappealing name of “GUANO” - Growing Up in An
Oil town (it took us a long time to find out what that stood for) and was led
by John (now Lord) Sewell. But very
little was published beyond conference papers and most of these had
disappeared.
Alas, the electronic files he sent us were in some
antiquated code and were quite unreadable.
The box of papers contained the original questionnaires plus some large
sheets of printout from computerised files in fading ink. Was it any use?
To find out I applied for some pump priming money at the
University and Krzysztof Adamczyk spent the summer of 2018 organising and
coding it into recognisable machine-readable data. This small sample of 389 respondents was recruited from the Family
Survey sub-sample (n = 2510) of the original 1964 study. It was in fact two
surveys – one of 251 parental respondents; and another of 138 child
respondents, each with a corresponding parent in the first survey – which asked
questions pertaining to individuals’ work history, housing tenure, family
relations and many other topics. Whilst this data remains largely unexplored,
we do know that, by and large, parental respondents did not join the
‘oil-boom’. Their children, however, benefitted from the oil industry, of which
58% of men and 25% of women had ever had an ‘oil’ or ‘oil-related’ job at the time of the survey in
1986.
A fantastic source of
data for PhDs
In May 2018 Krzysztof Adamczyk won an ESRC scholarship to
use the data to look at social mobility.
He employs a mixed-methods approach to
examine how individuals understand, experience and evaluate upward social
mobility and the effect of social mobility trajectories on their wellbeing.
This study investigates three interrelated issues that the discipline of
sociology has been grappling with for some time. The first issue is the
so-called ‘dissociative thesis’ which claims that upward mobility is a highly
disruptive experience which causes psychological distress. Has climbing the
social ladder been stressful in any way for the cohort members? Next, this
research aims to find out whether there is correspondence, or ‘fit’, between
individuals’ subjective experiences of mobility and their ‘objective’
trajectories as evaluated by sociologists and Office for National Statistics.
Do those upwardly mobile feel that they experienced social mobility? Finally,
inspired by the bourgeoning Bourdieu studies, is the problem of capital composition
in social mobility. Is mobility experienced similarly by those who achieved it
through acquisition of economic capital alone and those whose trajectory was
accompanied by significant increases in cultural capital? It is the aim of this
research to find answers to these questions and the cohort study is uniquely
positioned to enable an in-depth empirical investigation of these issues.
A good opportunity
for oral history
In 2016 I started an
oral history project related to this study.
It was part of an ESRC administrative data project currently being
carried out at Aberdeen University includes an element of oral history
(Administrative Data Centre-Scotland Work Package 3 on Oral History Capture –
public engagement, metadata creation, and deep investigation of historical
administrative data in the Aberdeen Children of the 1950s, RG12069-10) . The aim of the oral history part of the
proposal was to provide more insight
into the experiences of the Aberdeen Children of the 1950s and encourage wider
use of the data.
I talked to 22 people
who had volunteered to be interviewed.
We started with their experiences of childhood in the 1960s, when
Aberdeen was a very different place to what it is now.
Most people started life in old tenement houses, often with
outside toilets and communal washrooms. They were freezing in winter and often
crowded as many families were large. Children shared not just bedrooms but also
beds. The coming of council housing, which was widespread in Scotland, meant
that better conditions could be offered and people were pleased to move into
their newly built homes with modern facilities (and bathrooms indoors). People of all social backgrounds lived in
council estates in those days - not just poor people. There was no stigma to
it.
They went to school at a time when the eleven plus was an
important way of dividing people between those with educational prospects and
those without. The senior secondary
(grammar) schools were regimented and disciplinarian – a regime which benefited
some people but caused others to rebel, resign or drop out. For those who survived it was a ladder into
University and beyond. Aberdeen
University was important in this transition because most people stayed at home
when then went to University. Many people remember their school days fondly and
still remembered the names of their teachers.
An important public institution was the library. Most families did not have books at home, but
children went each week to change their books at the library and therefore had
access to many volumes of entertainment and information.
The National Health Service offered vaccinations, health
inspections and services for children so that the childhood diseases that had
maimed or killed children in the past were banished and most people born at
this time could look forward to long, healthy lives.
Meals were cooked by Mum and eaten at home – many came home
for lunch as well as supper. But the food was very plain with mince and tatties
being a staple diet. Those with
connections to the fishing industry might have had fish regularly and those
with allotments got vegetables when they were in season. Fruit was rare.
Children played outdoors with other children as the neighbourhood
was one large playground, with older siblings minding younger ones. Organised activities included Sunday School,
the Guildry, Scouts and Guides and for some people being involved in a sport
provided a social life. Otherwise Saturday morning cinema was a source of
entertainment for children in a pre-television era.
Did go to Sunday school, everybody went to Sunday
school. You didn't mind it too much, we weren't…church goers at all but I
imagine it was a way of getting children out of the house on a Sunday and it
was okay. Sunday school picnic, I do remember those, they were great fun
Holidays rarely extended beyond Aberdeenshire – they usually
consisted of renting a caravan in Stonehaven or on the Moray Firth. Or staying with relatives. So people’s lives were very locally based. Yet people maintained social boundaries and a
sense of privacy in the crowded tenements. Social life centred around family
and neighbours:
Yes, very much family based
though. Part of that …would be mum, I think that was maybe how people were:
boundaries were very clearly set, you don't tell your business outwith the
family.
People described modest but frugal lifestyles where budgets
were tight but people were provided for. Nobody felt poor because their
expectations were very limited. As one respondent pointed out – the outdoor
toilet that they shared with other tenement families was always spotlessly
clean! Often elderly relatives formed part of the household. Mum’s were mainly
at home doing housework and Dad’s were more distanced, being mainly at work (or
in the pub).
Mum would say things like… 'we
might be poor but we're very clean', washing was a big day, I remember that.
Because there was no washing machines then. There was…eventually a twin-tub but
even so there was a big sink. Things like our socks in summer, your white socks
were always boiled in a pan and things, everything – mum would always be washing.
It is important to remember that we are not talking about
the distant past, but about things that happened in the lifetime of the current
generation of people reaching retirement. All the interviewees on the project are
entering this phase of their lives in a much better situation to where they had
started. Now they own their homes and
usually have more than one toilet! In a
world without TV and without cars (for the most part) the communal institutions
of neighbourhood and family were important for shaping lives and these were
underpinned by the public institutions of the welfare state in the form of
housing, libraries, health services and education.
This was the first generation to have enjoyed these
universal services and they were well supported. Given
that many of these services are now being privatised or eroded, will people
born today enjoy the same kind of universal opportunities and support? The
study reminds us of how important that is.
Free download of the article: https://ebook3000.biz/iscot-magazine-issue-48-december-2018-january-2019-download/
Claire Wallace and
Krzystof Adamaczyk April 2019
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